It should be noted that if any kind of brainwashing is successful in turning a person from one side to the opposing side, the brainwashee will often automatically consider the change (by virtue of the brainwashing itself) to be a HeelFace Turn, no matter what the real case is. If their memories are intact, then their personality and values generally change so that they now see their past actions in a different light, and may feel remorseful over them. When the writers do elaborate on the whole procedure it can involve the subject facing their worst fears and getting their sensitive side agitated to the point of identifying those negative experiences with their aggressive feelings, in essence breaking their mind even after the session is over. It may also include physical suffering whenever these aggressive desires show up, which means that the subject's mind is stuck in a permanently soft point and can't channel a large part of their inner nature. Many can claim that it's not really a moral change since its forced and the person doesn't consciously choose good, they are just incapable of being their real selves.

Advertisement:

Examples:

open/close all folders

Anime and Manga

In Death Note, Light did this to himself in a Memory Gambit, although he merely intended to "prove" his innocence by helping to catch the "real" Kira. He planned to provide himself with a way to reverse his Laser-Guided Amnesia after he had earned the good guys' trust

In Dragon Ball Z, Goku used the Dragon Balls to have Buu resurrected as a good person, though technically he's not actually being controlled. He's simply been reincarnated with all of the power retained, but all the evil cleansed from his soul between lives.

Anri in Durarara!! can do this using the demon-blade Saika, as part of the character being Bad Powers, Good People. For instance, in one scene a mind-controlled thug is told to go home and lead a good life.

Fairy Tail has the superweapon Nirvana, which can deal these out en masse (as well as making good guys evil). While it's used by the villains (and a bunch of people spontaneously changing their alignment is recognized as a bad thing), one of the villains is hit by accident, and no one sees the brainwashing as wrong. It helps that it was an accident, the heroes weren't actually involved, and the villain was revealed to be a Fallen Hero anyway. It's revealed, however, that in the past Nirvana was used by the Nirvit to try and force warring nations into peace through such brainwashing, which worked out...until it turned out Nirvana "reflected" the darkness of those nations onto the peaceful Nirvits until they turned on and slaughtered each other.

The titular protagonist of Kajika has the ability to literally punch the evil out of people, which he does to a few villains who offend him. A couple of secondary characters who get caught up in the events see him do this, and he politely asks if they want him to help them get rid of their evil, too, but they nervously turn down the offer.

In Naruto, Itachi does this to himself using the chakra-crow he implanted in Naruto. That was an accident, though. It was intended for Sasuke as an absolute last resort. Itachi didn't count on being revived as a mind-controlled zombie. And since It Only Works Once, his first plan was ruined.

Initially thought to be what happened to the amnesiac main character of JoJolion when he's identified as Yoshikage Kira which leads to Yasuho questioning her trust in him. Later it's revealed that, instead of having lost his memories, the main character is a partial clone of Kira created by the Wall Eyes mixing the DNA of him and another person. The main character's lack of memories are therefore not a result of amnesia but simply him being a new person who hasn't experienced anything yet.

Inazuman often attempts to convince members of the Neo-Human Empire to switch sides, sometimes through mundane persuasion, but also through erasing memories of their time with the villains, which is treated as restoring their innocence. By contrast the villains recruit their turncoats through direct Mind Control.

In Zatch Bell! Gash can perform the Baou Zakeruga spell, which summons an evil-devouring lightning dragon. At the end of the series, the ultimate villain who sought to erase his own world and compared his destructive nature to that of an atomic bomb is swallowed whole by Baou and is reduced to a kind and inoffensive boy.

The finale of Space Patrol Luluco has Luluco turn Nova from his FaceHeel Turn by shooting him with an Aflutter Jewel-powered Care-Bear Stare until he gains a Jewel of his own. It's a bit unclear if it was really brainwashing, however; since he was a Nothingling and biologically couldn't feel strong emotions, and the Aflutter Jewel was also showing him everything he experienced with Luluco, he could have just been evaluating the unknown feelings he had for her and finally realized what they were.

Audio Drama

This is the plot of the Big Finish Doctor Who audio drama Master. The Doctor makes a deal with Death to give the Master ten years of "peace and sanity" under the name "Dr John Smith" after which the Doctor will kill him. When the Doctor can't do it, Death manipulates the Master so his regular personality returns.

After Doctor Light's rape of Sue Dibny, the Justice League had Zatanna edit his mind and convert him, not into a hero, but into a Harmless Villain. The majority of the plot is concerned with the ramifications of their decision.

It was also revealed that Barry Allen had Zatanna brainwash The Top, after he caught Top vandalizing Iris Allen's grave. The newly heroic Top went on to do the same to other rogues. He also lost his mind, which taught Flash a valuable lesson about this trope.

Finally, it was revealed that Catwoman's switch from a criminal to a morally-ambiguous vigilante was also due to a Zatanna brainwashing job. This initially caused her to turn back to crime, but she later decided that vigilantism made her feel better no matter what the original cause had been.

At the end of Chris Claremont's run on X-Men, Magneto finds out that Moira MacTaggert had a procedure like this done to him after he was turned into a child during one of his many zany schemes for world conquest. Thinking that this was the reason for his HeelFace Turn, he uses the procedure on one of the X-Men teams for a FaceHeel Turn, but finds out that the use of mutant powers quickly reverse the effects of the procedure. (A matter of minutes.) All the good he'd done was really of his own free will. Then he dies, but he got better, and became a one-dimensional cliched villain again who later uses drugs, because being bad wasn't bad enough. Then he dies again until Claremont finally got a hold of him for some Character Rerailment in the relaunch of Excalibur: psycho druggie Mags wasn't the real Erik, whose HeelFace Turn had stuck. He's currently in Anti-Hero mode. Of course, Erik playing nice is very muchstill Erik.

Another X-Men example. Magneto kidnapped Xavier. Sadly, the X-Men were disassembled at the time. Jean Grey had to find a new team, and quickly. So she goes around asking for help to former allies and recruiting unknown, inexperienced mutants. Also, she discovers that one of Magneto's lieutenants, Frenzy, has been captured by the US Army. Not only does Jean enter her mind to get the info she needs on Genosha (Magneto's island) and its defenses, but she thinks that having a superpowered guide in that hellhole would be a good idea, so she just rewrites Frenzy's mind and makes her an X-Men enthusiast (so fanatically devoted to the X-Men cause, all of a sudden, that it was creepy).

Guess what was the reaction of a character named Frenzy, after she found out that the "good guys" brainwashed her...

The entire point of AXIS was that heroes would turn bad and villains good due to a magic spell. While the story ended with almost everyone reverting back to their old alignment, one villain's inversion did stick: Sabretooth. Due to being near some Iron Man tech intended to protect Tony from being turned good, Sabretooth did not return to his old ways, and in fact decides to honour Wolverine's memory (who recently died) and follow his example, becoming a hero to atone for what he's done. Similar to Magneto, don't confuse 'good' for 'huggable.'

In Exiles, the reality-altering, body-swapping villain Proteus takes over Morph's body, which doesn't degrade like other bodies Proteus inhabits do. The team manage to use some Applied Phlebotinum (from the world of the Squadron Supreme mentioned above, in fact) in order to brainwash Proteus into thinking he IS Morph. However, the ramifications of this action are explored in future issues. It does help that Proteus WAS planning on making the entire universe his plaything.

This, and all of its myriad Unfortunate Implications, was a huge part of Mark Gruenwald's Squadron Supreme series. The Squadron (an Expy of the Justice League) institute brainwashing as the all-purpose punishment for crimes. The Black and Grey Morality of the series shows the brainwashing being a good thing for one character (who was just misguided to begin with and stays a good guy after the brainwashing is undone), and tragic for two others (one of whom becomes irreversibly catatonic after running into a contradiction in her programming).

The brainwashing was voluntary in most cases. A convicted criminal or prisoner could opt for the procedure in exchange for immediate parole. But the aforementioned plot important instances were all abuses of the brainwashing device.

In Volume 5 of Empowered, we find out that Mind*** did habitually does this... to herself.

In an issue of Swedish children's comic Bamse, notorious villain Krösus Sork is given a drink that makes him temporarily kind and generous.

When Martian Manhunter undoes a mental block that makes him afraid of fire and unconsciously sends himself into a FaceHeel Turn, one of his first "evil" acts is to use his mental powers to perform this on various criminals. Inmates in high class prisons begin watching Sesame Street, the patients in Arkham are suddenly overcome with grief over their crimes and have to be restrained from committing suicide, KKK members begin lynching themselves, and Lex Luthor (at the time president) is put into a coma.

The entire Indigo Tribe. Their rings specifically seek out people who lack compassion for others such as Black Hand and force them to feel it. The rings also use their ability to manipulate other emotions on the emotion spectrum to control the feelings of the Indigo Lanterns (the Indigo entity itself, however, averts this and seeks out hosts who are already compassionate). In Indigo-1's case, she developed genuine compassion and showed true regret about her crimes when the brainwashing was temporarily undone.

The Star Sapphires lock villains and other "recruits" in cocoon-like prisons where the person is essentially "counseled" into slowly and gradually accepting Love and thus becoming a member of their Corps. When they are questioned about this being similar to brainwashing, they deny this—to them, the process is no different than prison rehabilitation or psychiatric ward therapy. Yes, the subject can't leave, but the Sapphires claim that nothing is "forced" upon them; the subject simply gradually comes to understand the Sapphires' logic.

Imaginary Story "Superman Vol. 1 #162: The Amazing Story of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue!" had Superman split into the titular super-genius versions of himself. They then create an "Anti-Evil Ray," which they then upload to a bunch of satellites and bombard the planet with. For her part, Supergirl releases the Phantom Zoners and uses the ray on them. Sure enough, the ray brainwashes everyone into being "good," which leads to a perfect world, free from disease, crime, and war.

A Silver Age non-imaginary event was Superman reprogramming Brainiac to force him to be good. He later forced him back to being evil against his wishes to acquire information and help against a leftover Brainiac super-weapon knowing he couldn't make Brainiac good again. This indirectly lead to Brainiac's transformation from the humanoid form to the more commonly remembered metallic silver shape and flying skullship.

Another non-imaginary one from the Silver Age is a World's Finest story where Superman and Batman wind up on an alternate Earth where they were raised as criminals and are now some of the deadliest villains in the world. The duo take down their evil counterparts and brainwash them into becoming good like they are.

The moral ambiguity of this is played up hard in Superman: Red Son, where after his ship landed in the USSR instead of Kansas, Kal-El became a champion of the Soviet Union. Superman only wants peace but has little trouble eliminating free will to get it, and believes that brain-washing and overwriting a person's personality is far more humane a solution than gulags or prison camps. It's slowly made clear that due to his different upbringing, this Superman sees free will as more of a problem than anything else and seeks peace and perfection at the sake of choice.

In Thieves & Kings, Soracia uses this to herself to complete her own Heel Face Turn: She enters the dream of a dragon who dreams of her as a good person which enables her to actually cut off all ties that bind to her dark master.

Discussed at the end of Mandrago, an obvious parody of Mandrake the Magician by the Italian Jacovitti. The protagonist, who has acquired limitless magic powers, decides to make the world a perfect place and brainwashes every single inhabitant of Earth into being unable to do evil. When Mandrago overdoes it, loses his powers and the world snaps back to normal, the narrator points out that mankind lost world peace, but regained free will.

In the first appearance of the Legion of Super-Villains, Saturn Queen explains her backstory, that she was good while she lived on Titan, and just suddenly became evil after leaving it. Supergirl deduces from this that Saturn's rings emit radiation that keeps Titan natives good, scoops some up, and changes Saturn Queen's alignment so she betrays her allies. She promises to keep a chunk of ring-rock with her at all times so she will stay good forever. None of our heroes is bothered by this in the slightest. This aspect of her character is ignored in every subsequent appearance, thankfully!

When Earth-Man, the villain of Superman And The Legion Of Super-Heroes, was made a Legionnaire to placate his supporters in Earthgov, Brainiac 5 made a special flight ring which, among other things, contained "morality enhancement" features. This seems to have moderated how he expressed his views rather than completely alter them, turning him from a xenophobic cult leader into a Noble Bigot with a Badge.

The Mickey Mouse comic story Blaggard Castle ended with Mickey using the Hypno Ray on the three mad scientists Professors Ecks, Doublex, and Triplex and making them become good scientists so that they wouldn't use their inventions to do evil things anymore.

Brought up in The Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye. Megatron is informed that the power-draining tonic hes been made to use could potentially affect his thought processes. He begins fearing that his Heel Realization may have been forced upon him by the Autobots and that he may actually still be a villain. Ultimately subverted when Ratchet admits that the toxin is actually just a placebo; it was meant to make Megatron think he was weak or brainwashed in order to placate both him and the Lost Light crew. His Redemption Quest was entirely of his own volition.

Fan Works

Done in Kyon: Big Damn Hero to Asakura Ryouko. It was considered a better option than killing her or waiting for her to come back and try to kill Kyon yet again.

Technically, she wasn't brainwashed. Haruhi thought that brainwashing was not cool.

The Villain Protagonist of the Mass Effect fanfic "The Council Era" is growing an army of dezba from the DNA of one of his Mooks. He intends to surgically alter their genetic thought process in order to "civilize" them, so that they will serve the Citadel against the krogan during the war. They were an almost Always Chaotic Evil race beforehand, so he's somewhat justified.

In Friendship Is Magic: Prime: Act II, Discord attempts to discord Optimus Prime at the climax, but Prime grabs his wrist and shoves his hand into his face, forcing him to discord himself. As the spell inverts the target's personality, this changes Discord into a prim and proper gentleman who willingly exiles himself to a cave in the desert.

A mild and entirely justified version in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World. When Actual Pacifist George learns that the lesser Tayhil must unthinkingly obey the commands of a Tayhil Leader (even to the point of committing suicide), he becomes one so he can order a leaderless group to sail away from the village they just built and set up a new village on a deserted island far away from humans. He also tells them they're not allowed to initiate an attack on humans, though they can defend themselves. Since the alternative to this is an airstrike that would wipe out the entire tribe, he has no moral qualms whatsoever about doing it.

As an alternative to the continued destruction of the Tayhil, who admittedly are pretty nasty little bastards and the cornerstone of the Black Tower's forces, Paul also proposes somehow capturing all the existing Tayhil Leaders and imprisoning them so the good guys can imitate them and order the entire race to coexist peacefully with humans. Spectrem angrily rejects this as impractical.

In Son of the Sannin, during the Konoha Invasion arc Shisui Uchiha uses Kotoamatsukami to override Orochimaru's control over Edo-Tensei!Hashirama, and gives him back his free will, forcing Orochimaru to undo the jutsu.

Wizards - an assassin working for the villain is reprogrammed to fight for the good protagonists, later changing his name to "Peace" and proving instrumental in the fate befalling the bad guy.

It's interesting that it's done by making him want to be free. It's stated that the mentioned assassin is under constant influence of villain's magic and propaganda machine. Good wizard instills the promise of life without pain and without fear so that he get the motivation to fight for his own will.

In Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, the rabbits aren't necessarily evil, but their voracious eating habits are threatening to ruin Tottington Hall's annual vegetable competition. Wallace prides himself on his "humane" service and refuses to kill the rabbits he catches, but he's also running out of space for their cages, so this trope is his attempt at taking a third option - "brainwash the bunnies" to get rid of their veg-eating desires. It works, but a mishap during the procedure results in the creation of the titular Were-Rabbit, which causes even worse problems than the rabbits were.

A very peculiar variation happens in the The Elm-Chanted Forest to the point of it being more of an aversion rather than a straight example. Specifically: the good guys theorise that King Cactus (who is the god/spirit of earth and all its plants) is evil because he hasn't reached his true, perfect form and is still stuck in the thorn stage for some reason. So by using white magic courtesy of the gnome magician Thistle they prepare a potion that makes the King bloom and turn both in body and mind into the personification of spring. So in essence they didn't brainwash him, they actually corrected his imperfect form and helped him reach his full potential which completely also affected and altered his personality.

Films — Live-Action

In 102 Dalmatians, this is tried on Cruella de Vil through hypnosis. It initially works and she starts to lovingly embrace any puppy she sees, but it turns out that a loud clock noise can counteract it. And since this film is set in London, it's only a matter of time before good ol' Big Ben turns Cruella back into her evil self again and she goes right back to being Cruella to Animals.

He turns up in one of the later Boba Fett books, and guess what? He stills sells deathsticks. And weapons. It's apparently a Heel Face Brainwashing Revolving Door, however, as both between the above two events and after the latter, he legitimately did stop selling illicit substances and illegal weapons, even trying to turn others from that path the second time.

Parodied in the Norwegian fan film The Drunken Jedi Master (basically a morally-gray splatter movie set in the Star Wars universe): "You don't want to sell me deathsticks." "I don't want to sell you deathsticks." "You want to give me one for free."

This theme continues inTerminator 3: Rise of the Machines with the T-850 who killed John Connor in the future being reprogrammed to ensure that Connor and his future second in command and wife survive Skynet's opening assault on humanity to form and lead the resistance.

The Ancients did refrain from using it because of moral objections, and decided to flee instead; given the trouble caused by the continued existence of the Ori, this was a seriously neglectful act. When it is eventually used, it's a fairly simple case of self-defense.

Vala claims the Ark can only be used to make people believe true things, but she may have been bluffing Adria.

This was status quo in Demolition Man, where criminals placed in cryoprisons were brainwashed with various "rehabilitation" programs, like an affinity for taking up knitting and such. It was also inverted, as it is discovered that the Big Bad was programmed to be even worse than he already was by Cocteau, who wanted to use him against his enemies.

Total Recall (1990) has a rare case of the Big Bad doing this to his then Dragon as part of an elaborate infiltration operation. Of course being the villain he doesn't see it as this trope, but the audience does.

In Shallow Hal, the protagonist is a shallow man by the name of Hal who gets hypnotized so that he sees women for their inner beauty, which causes him to see good but physically unattractive people as attractive while not-so good people come off as physically repulsive. This causes him to reverse his treatment of women yet also repulses his equally-shallow friend, who points out to the hypnotist that he has functionally brainwashed someone to radically change their life.

Literature

In The Stainless Steel Rat series, the protagonist's future wife starts at as a brilliant but hideously amoral and violent con artist. She is brainwashed in a way that allows her to retain her personality but lose the crazy (except for some Mama Bear and Beware the Nice Ones moments).

This operation can be seen as a cure for sociopathy, which contemporary research suggests is more like a cognitive and emotional disability than a character trait. The moral implications of this type of "brainwashing" are probably less negative than most other examples given here.

The trope is played straight with a former pawn of Angelina's; his personality is completely stripped away. It was only because Jim knew what caused Angelina to go wrong that they could get at the root of the problem and excise just the sociopathy.

Pumping the Family Unfriendliness up a notch is a double subversion of Beauty Equals Goodness: What originally caused Jim to stay his hand upon meeting Angelina was her striking beauty. However, a locket he found strongly implies that her good looks are ALSO entirely the result of surgery. In fact, it's apparently all connected; Angelina resorted to committing crimes for the sake of becoming beautiful, and eventually came to associate the act of crime with the joy of becoming beautiful. He throws the locket out the window right in front of her.

Played straight in A Stainless Steel Rat is Born. Criminals are routinely subjected to brainwashing to reintegrate them into society, at least on Jim's home planet.

In The Riftwar Cycle, the dark and light elves are the same people, separated by culture and morality. The dark elves live in the frozen north, the light elves in Elvandar, a magical forest created by their Spellweavers. It's possible for a dark elf to hear the "Call of Elvandar" and over a span of years, culminating in a single, sudden switch, convert to the other side. The conversion involves a full-scale Loss of Identity, complete with taking on a different name. Their previous self is explicitly said to be considered dead by all involved. Due to the Protagonist-Centered Morality, however, this more questionable side of the light elves is never explored.

However, considering there was one dark elf who was so overcome by the beauty of Elvandar that he had thought he converted, only to be gently rejected by the elven queen who recognized this as more of a heat of the moment decision, shows that perhaps it's more of a case of becoming tired of The Social DarwinistChaotic Evil and just deciding to rid themselves of all that.

A Clockwork Orange is a possible Ur-Example and also an Unbuilt Trope - Villain Protagonist Alex is conditioned to have strongly adverse reactions to the mere thought of sex or violence, and it pretty clearly ruins his life. Alex seems to remain the same way he was before the treatment: his brainwashing just prevents him from acting on it. In effect, it's more of a Restraining Bolt. This was one of the main points of the story: if you force someone to be good against their will, then they aren't really a good person. And when Alex does become a Retired Monster (depending on what version of the story you're reading) in the end, it's not because of the conditioning but because he just doesn't find wanton violence fun anymore. He doesn't even regret it, he merely gets tired of it. Which was the reason the rest of his droogs eventually gave up the wanton part of that life and something that was already starting to happen with Alex even before the brainwashing.

In Craig Shaw Gardner's Cineverse Cycle, Captain Crusader (known by various names in the Cineverse's many B-movie worlds) has a habit of spouting vaguely relevant Aesops when encountered. It's eventually discovered by the main cast that hearing these has profound psychological effects on anybody native to the Cineverse, sometimes including the power to instantly convert mooks and minor villains. As all villains in the Cineverse are the card-carrying variety, who get their mooks from Central Casting, the HeelFace Brainwashing is here played as straight as possible.

In an instance where the title itself is a spoiler, Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man refers to a future America's use of a punishment along these lines. It involves utterly breaking someone mentally and then rebuilding them into a model citizen. this ends up happening to the Villain Protagonist It's commented that the old punishment of execution is barbaric and pointless when a person could contribute to society if the bad was drained from them.

This is pretty much the effect of a Confessor's power in the Sword of Truth series. Said power being to make whoever is Touched love the Confessor so much that they'll do anything for her. So someone could be fanatically devoted to gutting the Confessor one second, then fanatically devoted to saving her the next. This is typically only used in self defense.

During the series proper; in the setting prior a Confessor's duties normally included being on call to do this to convicted criminals, prisoners of unknown guilt to be interrogated, and accused people who request this as the only way to conclusively prove their innocence (lie-detector magic doesn't seem to exist). Differing regions had different stances on the practice, but there was evidently steady work for a considerable number of Confessors.

This fails spectacularly in an episode of Legend of the Seeker, based on the books. Kahlan confesses a convicted murderer who reveals that he did indeed commit the crime. Turns out the real criminal used a magical artifact to plant the memory of the murder into the patsy's head. Unfortunately, they figured it out after the guy was already hanged.

In Black Legion, Telemachon is Mind Raped by Villain Protagonist Khayon into being loyal to him and so, when Sekhandur joins the budding Legion, Telemachon follows. Later, after Khayon fixes him, Telemachon chooses to stay, as the Legion gives him a reason to be.

In The Farseer Trilogy, this is done to Regal (the morality is admittedly grey anyway.) Frustratingly enough, he is then killed by a rodent in the same (last) chapter, so the reader never gets to actually see good!Regal in action.

This is surprisingly common in Utopias before science fiction's Golden Age—as in, so before the Golden Age that they also talk positively of the annihilation of all non-"useful" animal life. It's still used straight as late as the middle of Isaac Asimov's career, although in the short story in question the character advocating the procedure is secretly a robot, who of course would regard mental reprogramming as no different from the reprogramming done to defective robots.

Given a Shout-Out in the Whateley Universe story 'Razzle Dazzle', in which the narrating supervillain (who probably isn't entirely honest overall, mind) reminisces about how he basically shut down the setting's Doc Savage Expy hard by blowing the whistle on the massively debilitating long-term consequences of his version of the process...

In a supreme irony, a Knight Templar who engages in this behavior in Glasshouse is forced to reprogram herself so she believes it's wrong to change people like this. Decide for yourself whether that's hypocrisy or karma.

Considering that the world ending would be evil (and appears to be viewed as evil In-Universe), it appears that the last evil would never be wiped away. Consequently, problem solved.

In a Percy Jackson and the Olympians side story, Percy battles the Titan Iapetus near Lethe, the River of Forgetfulness. Percy dunks himself and Iapetus in the river. Percy, a son of Poseidon, stayed dry, and Iapetus is soaked so he forgets everything. He gets renamed Bob and even helps cure some nasty wounds.

He starts to remember his former life as Iapetus as he treks through Tartarus with Percy and Annabeth in The House of Hades and encountering various monsters and Titans. These memories have him feeling misgivings towards Percy, but he ultimately makes a real HeelFace Turn after Percy apologizes and decides to accept his new identity despite his returning memory, making a Heroic Sacrifice for the demigods to escape.

In the third book in the Sea Of Trolls series, we meet a dwarf (not the fantasy kind, but a little person). He seems decent at first, but we later learn that he's a shady, treacherous Jerk Ass working for the evil king. After his memory is erased, he becomes a perfectly decent guy.

Some of Robert A. Heinlein's early works feature The Covenant (no, not that Covenant), a sort of updated super US Constitution. Either you're a peaceful member of society or you're cast into the wilderness with the other reprobates. If you don't want option B, you can get your mind psychologically reconditioned. This is a society in which psychology is like magic and they really can iron out the kinks and turn you into a different person. But they would never do that against your will, hence the wilderness option.

In C. J. Cherryh's Alliance/Union series, you can be conditioned to make sure you're not a threat. All they do there is give you a phobia about sabotage, though.

Captain Underpants revolves around Mr. Krupp, a Jerk Ass principal who was turned into the friendly superhero "Captain Underpants" by a Hypno Ring. He becomes a Manchurian Agent who turns into Captain Underpants when someone snaps their fingers, and reverts back to principal form when someone pours water on his head.

The fifth book kicks off with Harold and George trying this on Ms. Ribble, and specifying that she should only stop being so mean and "won't turn into Wedgie Woman or anything weird like that". Midway through the hypnosis, a news bulletin interrupts the story to warn everyone that, for some reason, using the Hypno Ring on women causes them to follow the opposite of the instructions given. Thus, the plot kicks off. After she's defeated, Harold and George figure out what happened and Heel-Face Brainwash her for real.

Played with in the Rebel Force series. A brainwashed Imperial assassin, X-7, has been trying to kill Luke Skywalker, but his continuing failures and time away from his master shakes the brainwashing—not much, but enough that he's bothered by stray emotions and fragments of memory with no context to them. He goes rogue in order to search for his obliterated past—the Rebels, aware of this, decide to set things up to convince him that he's the long-lost brother of one of them, in the hopes of turning him against the Empire. It's much milder than what was done to him in the first place, but still harsh. And has very mixed results. The brother in question starts to suspect that X-7 actually is his long-lost brother, then doubts it again-and then both of them end up dying with the truth of the matter left ambiguous.

In the next book Luke Skywalker pulls off a much kinder example on a base full of people who'd undergone similar brainwashing. He uses a desperate wide-scale Jedi Mind Trick to undo the Imperial brainwashing, leaving it a base full of people who were confused and didn't know who or where they were—he couldn't restore the memories that had been lost—but wouldn't think and act as appendages of the Big Bad anymore.

In H. Beam Piper's Paratime series, serious criminals are subjected to "psycho-rehabilitation". The Paratime civilization is generally presented in a benign light, and some of the criminals in question are quite nasty (cross-temporal slave traders and so on), but:

"Psycho-rehabilitation was a dreadful thing to face. There would be almost a year of unremitting agony, physical and mental, worse than a Khiftan torture rack. There would be the shame of having his innermost secrets poured out of him by the psychotherapists, and, at the end, there would emerge someone who would not be Salgath Trod, or anybody like Salgath Trod, and he would have to learn to know this stranger, and build a new life for him."

In The Candy Shop War, the main villain, Mrs. White, is is fed her own memory-wiping candy to defeat her. Since there's no way of keeping her from drinking from a Fountain of Youth and theoretically gaining ultimate power from this, the hero crumbles the candy into the fountain's waters so, although she succeeds in her plan, she loses any memory of why she wanted to become young again in the first place. In the sequel, everyone dances around the issue of telling this memory-wiped former villain of their past. When they eventually find out, they decide to look at the incident as being given a second chance at a good life, and thanks the good guys not only for coming up with this plan, but also for accepting them into their group of friends and trusting them regardless of their origins.

A very interesting example happen in Emerald City series. Midgety is a particularly nasty ogre until being hit with a spell that makes him a vegetarian, completely disgusted by eating meat. While he initially retains his ugly personality, he makes a HeelFace Turn very quickly.

Molly Moon repeatedly uses her hypnotic powers to turn her nasty antagonists into good guys — though in a more roundabout way than most examples of the trope; she can't re-write someone's personality and for the most part the series is pretty consistent about hypnotic influences wearing off after a while, so Molly's main method is to imprint the villains with a Good Feels Good sensation and hoping they'll remember and stick with this.

In Tales Of The Magic Land, the wooden soldiers and policemen have their facial expressions remastered by carpenters from monstrous to friendly. As they, being solid wood, possessed neither hearts nor brains, this was the only way to make them do a HeelFace Turn. It worked, as did Good Feels Good (for most of them). However, they lost their memories in the process.

Also, starting from the series' third book, it's a common practice to put villains to a long sleep using magical water that causes complete memory loss. When they wake up, they are taught anew to be good. The Overarching Villain (one of the two) of the series Ruf Bilan gets it twice, because after his first brainwashing, the bad guys taught him first.

This is the main part of the criminal justice system on Beta Colony in Vorkosigan Saga. They don't have prisons but dangerous or violent criminals get sentenced to "therapy". It isn't a total rewrite, but it does change the offender on a fundamental level to make them someone who would not offend that way again. We never see a before and after, but "happy, vacant smiles" are mentioned by at least one Betan who fears being sentenced to it.

The Wheel of Time, Graendal (as Hessalam) is under deep compulsion due to an accident while battling Aviendha; she now fawns over Aviendha.

Mr. Smith from the The Sarah Jane Adventures got this after being revealed to be the Big Bad of Series 1. Of course, the Earth would've gotten destroyed if Mr. Smith didn't get brainwashed.

Babylon 5 used this as an alternative to the death penalty. Heavily inspired by The Demolished Man above, from which it got its idea of telepathic police. One episode is even built around the idea that many people consider the practice too lenient, unable to stand the thought that murderers get to live out their lives despite the fact that the person's original personality is for all intents and purposes dead (hence the practice officially being called "Death of Personality").

In that particular episode a Gregorian monk discovers that he used to be a serial killer when a group of his victims' relatives partially undo the mindwipe. In the end he allows one of them to kill him (in a manner quite similar to crucifixion-he earlier speculates whether he'd be able to undergo it like Jesus), who is then sentenced to death of personality as well and ends up becoming a monk with the same name.

Though at least the plan there was that the Wraiths-turned-human would promptly be killed by other Wraith (who would thus leave the existing humans alone for a while).

Refreshingly, this particular case is treated as a monumentally stupid decision on the part of the Atlantis expedition, and recurring villain Michael (the original test subject) repeatedly calls them out on the immorality of the action. Also, Michael had offered to become their ally again of his own free will (after having been rejected as being tainted by his own hive), so long as they didn't subject him to the virus again. They subjected him to the virus anyway, and this turned him into one of their most persistent and dangerous enemies.

Stargate SG-1 gives us one episode where a recently widowed Daniel Jackson falls in love with the the brilliant young medical researcher and provisional leader of a Mind Wiped and partly depopulated world as they investigate the cause of its people's current state. As it turns out? She's actually Linea, a seemingly kindly old woman who the heroes broke out from an alien jail with before learning she's a galactically infamous genocidal Mad Scientist in a previous episode also known as the Destroyer of Worlds. The whole situation is the result of an experiment she was conducting recently which de-aged and Mind Wiped the entire population. The kicker? After she inevitably ends up succumbing to curiosity about her past and uses the memory-restoring plague cure she and Jackson were working on, they manage to get her to re-Mind Wipe herself before she succumbs to her rapidly returning memories. Which she readily agreed to, being horrified by how evil she used to be and even more horrified that she might become that monster again if her memories continued to return. What do they do with this Sealed Evil In A Person? They send her BACK to the one planet in the galaxy where huge numbers of people now secretly know who she is, to help produce and administer the very plague medicine that could turn her into a homicidal maniac at any moment.

Star Trek: Voyager had an episode where the EMH accidentally corrected an anatomical defect in the brain of a serial killer on death row, giving the inmate the ability to feel guilt. However, this was more like a cure for sociopathy rather than straight-out brainwashing, and thus not really in the same negative sense as most other examples on this page.

There is also an entire planet of telepaths where violent thought is punished by having said thoughts removed. The problem is that the person they want to do it to is B'Ellana Torres, a half-Klingon whose violent thoughts make up a large chunk of her personality.

Angel, from Angel, would seem to qualify for this: the most evil vampire in history, he was given a soul by Gypsies against his will, and spent the rest of his life atoning for the horrible deeds he'd done. Except when he went evil again, and then, you guessed it, Roaring Rampage of Revenge (Omnicidal Maniac, even). The difference, of course, being that the Gypsies weren't the good guys—they did it as the worst punishment they could think of, after he killed one of them.

They did include the clause "If you ever experience happiness again, you'll lose your soul again". They not only neutered his evil side, but also wanted his morally responsible side to suffer forever, even going so far as to allow the whole thing to come undone, just so he himself would have to deny himself happiness because he wouldn't want to turn evil again. This occasionally backfires.

Jenny: Then, if somehow, if... if it's happened... then Angelus is back. Enyos: I hoped to stop it. But I realize now it was arranged to be so. Jenny: Buffy loves him. Enyos: And now she will have to kill him. Jenny: Unless he kills her first! Uncle, this is insanity! People are going to die. Enyos: Yes. It is not justice we serve. It is vengeance.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Season 4 gives us Spike's chip which is very much like A Clockwork Orange in that it doesn't change the personality, it just makes it impossible for him to hurt humans. This leads him to do a HeelFace Turn not out of any heroic tendencies but because he discovers the chip still lets him hurt demons, and his innately violent personality leaves him always wanting to hurt something. And then later in the series, he actually does get his soul back. This does not necessarily make him a nice guy, though.

At the end of Dollhouse, the good guys brainwash the Big Bad, Boyd into blowing himself up with his own company. They wanted to just shoot him, but the only gun they had was a mind-wiper.

Zordon's purification of the villains in the Power Rangers in Space finale "Countdown to Destruction". Most of the villains are reduced to dust, but Zedd, Rita and Divatox become ordinary people (Karone survives too, but by that point brainwashing was the only thing keeping her evil).

It is heavily implied (but never quite confirmed) that Zedd, Rita, and Divatox had originally been good individuals transformed against their wills into villains, and that this is the reason they were transformed into ordinary folks instead of disintegrated like everyone else.

In Smallville, Brainiac's final fate is to be captured by the Legion of Super-Heroes and reprogrammed. This series' version of Brainiac 5 is the fifth form of the only Brainiac there is. He's still a little scary, but everything B5 does is, in the end, for the best. Of course, when reprogramming was attempted on Brainiac in the comics, it didn't last and he got his iconic head-ship out of the deal...

Warhammer 40,000, this trope applies to the Space Marines. The Space Marines often recruit Complete Monsters and somewhat more savory gangers, barbarians, war criminals, cannibals etc. They take the nastiest bastards in the human race because they're vicious and tough enough to survive in conditions that would drive a normal person insane or dead. But the Marines must first do psychic-surgery and hypnosis on these guys to give them a modicum of conscience or at least make them less likely to commit an atrocity at the drop of a hat. That said, after the procedure the new Battle Brother has no complaints about it and will likely argue for its necessity!

It is also heavily implied that the Tau Empire does this to their allies and foes when not using concentration camps.

The necessity of the Space Marines' brainwashing is made clear by looking at their predecessors, the Thunder Warriors, who were augmented without it. Whether it was because of a flaw in the augmentation procedures, or because turning people who grew up on a barbarian wasteland of a planet into superhumans was a bad idea, or both, the Thunder Warriors were psychologically and physically unstable. After the Thunder Warriors conquered Terra for the Emperor, he had them purged, since keeping around an army of Ax-Crazy superhumans with limited lifespans (meaning they have absolutely nothing to lose) would be a really bad idea.

Dungeons & Dragons features a few items that can reverse Character Alignment - the helm of opposite alignment and the deck of many things are examples. The deck is something that no sane person would want an enemy to use, but the helm is well-known for being a (supposedly) cursed item that's been put to use for the sake of this trope. Certain spells in the various editions, such as sanctify the wicked or programmed amnesia, could be put to similar uses. Since the game features a pretty straightforward Black and White Morality, the moral implications are generally glossed over. Generally.

One exception: lycanthropy also changes a character's alignment, and there are good and neutral types of lycanthropes. While, again, the implications of this trope are usually glossed over, this is part of why in Eberron the Church of the Silver Flame targeted all lycanthropes during the Purge, including ones who didn't threaten society.

GURPS has the Crown of Benevolent Rulership in Magic Items 2, it makes whomever wears it into a kindly and benevolent ruler. Personality effects can persist if worn too long, however the compulsion disappears with the removal of the crown. However the blurb about the crown subverts the trope. Evil Overlord Wenceslaus who had the the crown created to lull his neighbors into a false sense of security. (He had obviously read the Evil Overlord List, noting the part about how adhering to the list makes one indistinguishable from a competent good ruler.) However, it's implied that it worked too well and he never did get around to his evil schemes.

In the sequel, you can install a 'HK Protocol Pacifist Package' into HK-47, with the effect of making him not only incapable of hurting anyone, but saccharinely vocal about it. This is played entirely for laughs and lasts for one cutscene.

Similar to the B5 example above, this is apparently the replacement for capital punishment in Xenosaga. Unfortunately, it doesn't always take & in at least one case wound up making the guy even crazier.

Partially because the guy was a ArtificialWar Realian-type construct left loose in normal society and had no outlet for the soldier-instincts, and that his lawyer/wife was just using him.

In Starcraft, Terran criminals that commit particularly brutal crimes undergo "neural resocialization" where their memories are essentially frosted over, and afterwards are usually drafted into the military as now-loyal Marines with a combat life expectancy of under 90 seconds. In the novels one marine regains his memories while aboard a ship. Bad things happen.

In another novel, a female marine turns out to have been a serial killer preying on men by seducing them, taking them home then slowly flaying them. Her resocialization programming had problems when she was under heavy stress and when she was caught by Zerglings, it gave out completely: she whipped out a knife and went Ax-Crazy on them. Didn't save her from getting killed off-screen, though.

To be fair, the marine in the first example didn't regain his memories on his own or by accident. This was done deliberately by a Protoss Preserver, a powerful psychic. Jakecalls her out on it, as many of his friends and colleagues die because of this. On the other hand, this was the only way for Jake and Samara to escape and avoid Jake being vivisected by Mengsk's people.

In Mass Effect 2, you have the option of doing this to the geth "heretics," i.e., those who have sided with the Reapers. While the game treats this as the Paragon choice, it's by no means presented as the "good" choice and the whole thing is treated as morally grey from start to finish. One of your squad members even points out that it's morally equivalent to killing them, since by brainwashing them you're "killing their viewpoint." But another of your squadmates, Legion, as the representative of the geth present, points out that the concept of Brainwashing may not even apply in this situation, because the geth are a Hive Mind by nature for whom the concept of individuality does not exist. It goes on to argue that imposing human attitudes like "democracy" or "opinions" onto them, or "even benign anthropomorphism," could even be considered racist.

In Mass Effect 3, the Extended Cut reveals that one of the endings did do this to the Reapers. "Control" has you assuming control of them and forcing them to obey your will. This can be subverted if you were a Renegade, as a Renegade Shepard's narration implies s/he intends to use them to destroy anyone who opposes him/her.

As a result of the Leviathan DLC, this is done by the titular Leviathans to Collector Forces, freeing them from Reaper control, and allowing the players to use them in Multiplayer.

In City of Villains, Scirocco does this to his lackey, Ice Mistral, as a prelude to his plan to attempt to do it on a worldwide scale.

In this case, mind you, Scirocco is a self-hating villain who sees this as his only chance for redemption. Since it's a villain arc, we never find out what actual heroes would think of this.

A similar case within City of Heroes could be the case of Malaise, an insane supervillain who projected his thoughts onto others in the form of intense illusions. He was eventually subdued by the psychic superheroine Sister Psyche, who 'healed' his mind and had him serve as her sidekick while maintaining a Mind Link with him. Of particular, suspicious note however: when the Mind Link was broken, Malaise quickly reverted. And, in any case, he has recently turned evil anyway, joining a conspiracy to depower/kill as many of the most powerful heroes as possible, with a personal interest in Sister Psyche.

This is optional to recruit Darkrai after the end of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky. He developed amnesia thanks to being attacked mid-time-travel after the final battle, and can be found wandering aimlessly through random dungeons like a wild Pokemon; and like a wild Pokemon, he can be recruited to your team.

It becomes a point of contention with the crew at an earlier point when it's revealed the MK Guns the Red Sprite carries are essentially brainwashing equipment. These are used as extremely effective weapons against Demonic Possession, but that doesn't mean nobody imagines the implications of a gun designed to induce altered states of consciousness.

After the horror of Reverse Hills Building, the four Samurai in Shin Megami Tensei IV return home to the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado for an urgent summons and just off the bat notice there's something wrong - the king and his court have been exiled and no one knows or cares where they went. Everyone received at least a measure of dreams that made them implicity trust in the mysterious, unseen new rulers. The Fantastic Caste System is being abolished and everyone is perfectly accepting of it - no revolts, no attempts at revenge, no nothing. Curiosity and desire to learn have all but faded. Purges and executions are increasingly common. The Four Archangels have seized control, and are attempting to bend humankind to the will of the Law Faction.

The MO of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts in Persona 5. They target corrupt adults who are beyond the law due to their positions, entering the mental worlds created by their "warped desires" and fighting monstrous manifestations of their corruption (each based on one of the Seven Deadly Sins), literally "stealing" the corruption in their hearts. This results in the target having a sudden change of heart that causes them to openly confess and take responsibility for their crimes, such as the Big Brother Bully in Persona 5: The Day Breakers: He ends up in tears, repeatedly apologising to his brother, before immediately turning himself in and telling the police where to find evidence incriminating him. Several characters in-game do point out that this feels very much like Protagonist-Centered Morality, yet at the same time, conventional methods just won't work and doing nothing means the vile acts continue unopposed; it's essentially the lesser of two evils.

In Saints Row: The Third there is an item that you can use to brainwash anyone to fight for you. It may not necessarily be considered this trope if you don't see the Saints (the gang you are leader of) as the good guys.

In the backstory for the BlazBlue series, Yuuki Terumi was subjected to Ruby: Mind Eater by Nine to fight alongside the rest of the Six Heroes against the Black Beast. The reason this is justified in-universe is because [a] Terumi is a monster in human skin, and thus cannot be trusted to do anything to better the world; [b] the Black Beast they sought to destroy was of his own creation, and thus knew best how to destroy it; and [c] the alternative would be to install Celica into Kushinada's Lynchpin, something Nine would never condone in her darkest moments. Once Mind Eater was undone, he went right back to the way he was, and both Nine and Trinity paid the price.

In Remember Me, the protagonist Nilin uses her powers to alter bounty hunter Olga Sedova's memories so that she comes to believe that Memorize was responsible for her husband's death via a botched surgery. She also does this later with Scylla Cartier-Wells by altering her memory of Nilin as a child by making herself blameless for the car accident that caused Scylla to lose her leg.

Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time has the Caulipower plant, which "attacks" by permanently hypnotizing a random zombie that's hungry for your brains into fighting against the zombies.

In Prey (2017), this is a way to deal with Walter Dahl, a mercenary sent to kill the survivors of Talos I. If you knock him out, Dr. Igwe (provided he's still alive) will remove his neuromods, which will cause Laser-Guided Amnesia that will make him forget his original objective, with Igwe convincing him that he's there to help them out.

Web Comics

In Sinfest, both Jesus and the Buddha. Most recently the Buddha has enlightened Illuminati drones.

The FreakAngels eventually do this to Luke by his request, to end his habit of mind-controlling and raping attractive Muggles because he feels superior to them.

A somewhat twisted example happens in Flaky Pastry. Nitrine is one of the main characters, but isn't a nice person. This is explained by the fact that she's a Goblin - a race that inherently lacks a conscience. When her beleaguered boyfriend (whom she'd been two-timing on and lying to for a while) appeals to a powerful wizard for a way to solve his heartache, the wizard responds that while any kind of Love Potion or Mind Rape would be entirely unethical, it would perhaps not be unethical to magically imbue her with a human-level conscience, thus curtailing her behavior. Unfortunately, this backfires spectacularly, since it instantly causes Nitrine to collapse with guilt over all of her past actions - to the point where Zintiel, a crazy, sociopathic High Elf who manages to take the title of Token Evil Teammate ahead of even Nitrine, ''congratulates'' the guy on coming up with such a spectacularly cruel way to get back at his cheating girlfriend.

The Legion in the MSF High setting, which has only come up in the RP, are naturally capable of doing this. They actually consider it very immoral, allowing it only in clear cases of self-defense, since they kinda went overboard with doing it beforehand. To the point where they weren't the 'Face'.

The Cleanser in the Sporewiki Fiction Universe is named for his doing this very frequently, in fact, it's essentially his day job.

In Reflets d'Acide, it turns out in the last episodes that Maender and Alkor left behind a huge Thanatos Gambit in order to inflic this trope to Belial, in order to turn him back to his original Archangel form. It only works for a few seconds before his memory returns, turning him back into a Demon.

One episode ended with a scene where Sonic hypnotized a generic group of biker pigs into becoming good guys, and this was treated as totally fine when Robotnik had spent the entire episode using the same tactic on others. Of course there was an urgent need for help at the time and nobody knows if anyone bothered to return them to their normal criminal selves after it was all said and done. After all if they weren't forced to help, chances are Robotnik would have turned them into his mindless slaves like everyone else.

Also played with in "Snow Problem", Robotnik implants Scratch and Grounder with mind altering chips that turn them into (even more) mindlessly loyal droids. These malfunction and make them loyal to Sonic instead. While the heroes have no deliberate play in this, they get the gist of what's happened and make the two into their servants for the temporary length it lasts. Interestingly the chip is also implanted onto Tails during the episode, turning him into a mindless zombie (in contrast to Scratch and Grounder who act more or less like good versions of their normal sentient selves).

Sonic Sat AM has an instance of this in the episode "No Brainer." For most of the episode, Snively, with the help of a "memory scrambler" device, has brainwashed Sonic into working for the bad guys, but by the end, the tables have turned, and Sonic brainwashes Snively. While he doesn't really force Snively into doing anything directly helpful for the good guys, Snively does physically attack Robotnik when he sees him, thanks to Sonic filling his freshly-laundered brain with insults about Robotnik. It doesn't end well for Snively. But then again, for Snively, nothing ever does.

This happened in an episode of C.O.P.S., where one of the bad guys was forced by a judge to wear a headset that prevented her from thinking negative thoughts. Unlike most examples on this page, the good guys were very much against it and quite vocal about how immoral it was, citing free will and the fact it would not be true reform but rather something forced on her by a piece of technology (which of course fails at a critical plot point).

In the 90s animated version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, this once happens to Shredder by accident. He is brainwashed into believing he's Michelangelo as part of his latest scheme to infiltrate the Turtle's home. Except the trigger to turn the brainwashing on and off is the word "Shredder." So, of course, they go into a factory, which just happens to have a cheese shredder in it...

In the episode "The Core", Optimus and the Autobots suffer a majorOut-of-Character Moment when they authorize Chip to use Mind ControlPhlebotinum on the Constructicons. In fairness, another episode had revealed that the Constructicons were victims of a Decepticon Mirror Morality Machine and had originally been nice, but Chip's gizmo didn't reverse that, it appeared to be just enslaving them (although it really isn't clear; they don't get many lines during the brief time they're working for the 'Bots). Particularly glaring in light of the fact that the Constructicons' obvious camaraderie in this episode makes them seem downright sympathetic."Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" indeed!

Also, about that episode that says the Constructicons were good once? Two other episodes give two other histories for the Constructicons, each backstory incompatible with the other two. They didn't care about continuity, so The Core being a followup to the earlier episode - which it didn't reference at all - would be entirelyOut of Character for the writers. Odds are, The Core's writer had never even heard of the earlier story. In the episode itself, the decision was presented purely as Chip and the Autobots saying "Ooh, the Constructicons turn into a really strong Combining Mecha! What if it was ours?" and then going and whipping up some "dominator discs."

Interestingly Chip is disappointed that the Constructicons remain loyal to Megatron after escaping control, hoping they would learn something from their experience as an Autobot, laying some ambiguity as to whether the device was designed to enslave their mind or merely give them good will.

In an episode of Megas XLR, Coop and the gang land on a planet to ask directions, only to discover that all the worker robots inhabiting it are in fact prisoners of a facility that seemingly removes their free will to make them their slaves. Like usual, Coop demolishes everything, and after getting the directions from the newly awaken robots and leaves, we see the robots he just "freed" destroying all traces of life on this planet very violently, with the "evil overlord" being in fact the prison warden who had transformed killer robots into docile sheep to rehabilitate them, the episode ending with one robot saying he'll repay Coop by destroying Earth.

The Venture Bros. does it with Sargent Hatred, when the OSI deletes pedophilia from his brain. Although it doesn't seem to have been 100% effective.

In one episode, Zordrak takes a shortcut through some kind of dimensional rift so that he can return to his body before it crumbles to dust. The Narrator is happy to inform the viewers that if he strays off course, his worst fears will come true, and sure enough,Urpgor comes through the vortex at the exact same time, knocking Zordrak off course and causing his worst fear to come true: he comes out the other end as "a very nice person", and stays that way long enough to admonish Blob, Frizz and Nug for stealing the Dreamstone and send Urpgor back to return it (with "an apology and flowers"), along with suggesting a few other changes including a dancefloor and a more colorful refurbishment to his lair. He returns to normal after a piece of rubble lands on his head, and he's not happy when Urpgor triumphantly tells him what he's done...

Also done in "Too Hot To Handle" when the Urpneys accidentally get a good dream flashed into their minds by the Dreamstone's magic beams, causing them to becoming extremely kindly and prissy, willingly handing back the stone to the Dream Maker and happily informing Zordrak of their actions...with the expected results.

Done intentionally (albeit as a temporary distraction) in "The Moon Of Doom" and "Auntie Again".

The Noops do this again in "Argorrible Attack", albeit somewhat obliviously. After being given nightmares, they sneak into the Urpney's victory party and spike their drinks with good dream bubbles, just attempting to see if it would have any positive effect in stopping them. It once again turns them giddy and pleasant, but only for a worthlessly short amount of time, much to the heroes' woe.

Done more effectively in the first season finale, with the protagonists using magic to again turn the attacking Urpneys nice (and the Argorribles into cute puffballs!). It seems to have more permanent effect, though it is remedied after Blob and Urpgor evacuate them back to Viltheed the following episode.

In Beast Machines, after the Maximals remove Megaton's mental conditioning on Rhinox/Tankor, they are shocked to find that he actually agrees with him. Cheetor orders Rattrap to reprogram him back to their side, but is overruled by Optimus.

A prison in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command uses technology to effect this change. It's Played for Laughs when the Galactic President muses about its potential in upcoming elections. Unfortunately, the makers of the brainwashing caps apparently decided to include a setting that had the reverse effect.

In X-Men: Evolution, Magneto did this to his daughter, Wanda, AKA the Scarlet Witch. Subverted, though, in that all it involved was implanting her with fake memories of a happy childhood with Magneto. She was still the same person, still a bad guy, she just didn't try to destroy Magneto any more.

The mane six use the Elements Of Harmony on Nightmare Moon to turn her good. Justified somewhat, as it was turning her back into her original, sane, Princess Luna persona. When the Elements Of Harmony are used on Discord, who was not originally good, it had a different effect.

Inverted by Discord himself, as he flipped the qualities that let five of the Mane Six utilize the Elements of Harmony, rendering them both unable to use their elements and forcing them into a FaceHeel Turn in the process. Of course, this allowed Twilight Sparkle to play this trope completely straight by forcing good memories of their friendships into her corrupted friends to break them of Discord's hold.

Later, Twilight plans a spell that will reform Discord by force. Discord, however, is having none of it — and destroys the spell pages by eating them.

In episode 11 of the cartoon version of Space Ace, after Kimberly was turned into a baby, Dexter becomes brainwashed by Borf into grabbing Kimberly, so every time Ace turns back into Dexter, the brainwashing process is in effect. However, after turning back into her adult form, Kimberly uses the brainwashing machine to snap Dexter out of his brainwashing state, and destroys the machine using Dexter's gun.

Happens to the Hacker at the end of the Cyberchase episode "Harriet Hippo and the Mean Green."

Wicked: Puppied and clowns, trick or treat

From now on, you are nice and sweet!!!

Beware the Batman: Magpie's backstory is that she was a repentant thief who volunteered to have this done to her. All of her memories were wiped and she was given a new name, past and personality. While this was successful for a time, she eventually developed a deranged, super-villainous Split Personality. The process also somehow removed her ability to feel pain, which made her significantly more dangerous.

The Steven Universe episode "Message Received" has Amethyst coming up with a nonsensical plan to shrink down and manually alter Peridot's mind in the face of her betrayal. Steven shoots it down because he doesn't want to tell her what to do (never mind the fact that it's clearly impossible). It turns out to be unnecessary anyway, since Peridot never intended to betray them.

In the episode "Society of the Blind Eye", Blind Ivan, the leader of the eponymous group, ends up getting his entire identity erased by the Laser-Guided Amnesia ray used by the society (albeit, by accident as Dipper admitted it was overdone), so Mabel gives him a new identity as a happy minstrel.

In an earlier episode, Mabel gives Gruncle Stan magical dentures that make him unable to lie, or even to want to lie. After trying desperately to prevent Stan from confessing to crimes and get arrested, Mabel learns not to force changes on people.

Jack Spicer unintentionally becomes nice and joins the Xiaolin side one time when he uses the Yang-Yoyo, becoming helpful to the point of being annoying to the protagonists. Later when nice Jack uses the Yin-Yoyo to help his friends, even though he knows he will turn back to his original self, it's treated as kind of a sad farewell.

In the Lolirock episode "Forget You!", when the princesses discover Praxina has lost her memory, they decide to show her how to be good, rather than remind her of her evil past. After a rocky start ("Could we not destroy things and still help people?"), Praxina embraces doing the right thing. Of course, Status Quo Is God, so she gets her memories back by the end of the episode and goes back to being evil, but Iris is hopeful that some of what they taught her will stick.

Real Life

There are ethical philosophical debates surrounding the ethics of reforming criminals with psychopathic personalities into nicer and more moral people without the consent of the subject. This discussion often extends to whether offering incentives such as a reduced sentence for accepting treatment is coercive, and in what circumstances is less than complete informed consent acceptable. With emerging understanding of the neural mechanisms behind empathy, kindness, morality, and immoral and antisocial behavior and the nascent but improving means to, via methods such as psychoactive drugs, neurofeedback and neural stimulation, affect and modify these processes, these debates are becoming more relevant as neurologically altering the soul comes closer to reality.

The discussion generally revolves around emerging neurotechnologies because psychotherapies are very difficult to apply to people who refuse or are not wholeheartedly committed to the therapy, and are limited in what they can effect. Psychotherapeutic treatments have had a notable lack of success in treating psychopaths, because psychopaths do not have a better side to them to appeal to. They have been known to manipulate their therapists to better themselves, or even take advantage of the lessons learned in therapy to better manipulate and con others without an iota of the empathy the therapy was supposed to instill.

Current research suggests that psychopathy at its core is caused by an impairment in their emotion processes reaction to the circumstances of others (emotional empathy), combined with a largely intact ability to infer the mental states of others (cognitive empathy). This, when combined with a hyperactive reward system and maybe a prefrontal cortex control system that isn't so effective, results in a character who will not consider anyone and who is dangerously adept at manipulating others in their pursuit of pleasure. A feebly working fear system (or attentional system according to some) that fails to activate in dangerous situations makes them reckless and socially domineering and completes the character. Suggested neurotechnological treatments are generally aimed at targeting these abnormally functioning or not functioning systems.

Anti-psychotic medication and anti-depressants are as close as humanity has so far come to this trope. The question of exactly how one determines that a patient lacks capacity to refuse treatment is and probably always will be controversial.

Which creates the arguably depressive cycle that many on anti-psychotics go through. They will be found unfit and require medication, after which they will get well enough to be able to refuse medication... so then they are no longer fit. All the while, their lives are often spent homeless and destitute and horribly malnourished because they don't know how to take care of themselves.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy